Sunday, December 29, 2013

How much can you make from a video on YouTube?

Ever wondered how much you can make from making a YouTube video. I suspect only a small percentage of the videos go viral on YouTube which is what is required to make real money on YouTube. Much as people rush to the goldfields of past, online services hold the promise of undreamt of riches, but few reach the volume needed to make any real money.

A good example of a YouTube video that has made money is Psy's Gangnam Style. According to the Huffington Post article Psy made an estimated $870,000 for 1.23 billion views when the article was published in January 2013. Up until now Gangnam Style has been viewed 1.86 billion times. The video was published in July 2012. From the point of view of making money, what is important is you need traffic, lots of traffic.

How much then can you make from your video?

What is good about Psy's video is it provides a guide as to how much you can make. For every view of Psy's video Psy made 0.07 cents. Yes that's less than a tenth of a cent for each view.

Based on the information provided for Psy's video, the following is an indication of how much you could potentially make with a video on YouTube for a given number of views.

1,000 - 70 cents

10,000 - $7

100,000 - $70

1,000,000 - $700

10,000,000 - $7,000

100,000,000 - $70,000

1,000,000,000 - $700,000

Obviously if your video is only being viewed a few hundred times it won't make much at all. If you check current popular YouTube videos you'll see videos are being viewed in the tens of thousands so even those videos will make less than a $100. Those videos with a million views, still don't make a considerable amount of money and it is only when they reach multiple millions does the money sound interesting and tens of millions when the money starts to become appealing. I selected the popular videos option in YouTube and the highest number of views was 4.67 million views. That's a huge number of views for a little over $3,000. Not much really.

What I find very interesting is when you compare the number of viewers of a YouTube video compared to the number of viewers watching a TV show. In Australia, if a TV show had 4.67 million viewers it would be a huge success with a massive budget, with the people creating the show making a great deal of money. With YouTube it is just another video.

Hopefully this information helps others who may be considering YouTube as a means of generating income.